Friday, June 25, 2010

Working with Epoxy Putty for remodeling

Ello guys, I am currently working on the MG Sazabi since 10 am ( its 6 pm now )... so I figured to take a break and create a very simple turorial on how to work with Epoxy Putty for remodeling parts of your mechs. Nothing fancy here, just a few notes for the new people who just acquired the hobby.

There are lots of epoxy putty brands out there and a lot of hobby grade puttys as well. I have bought a Mr. hobby variant before, but apparently I bought an old stock and it is as hard as rock already, I ended up using a Pioneer Wood epoxy putty back then.

I usually use Pioneer epoxy putty, the wood variant and the aqua variant. Both serves the purpose well, the wood variant is a little more grainy than the aqua variant and the wood dries to a flesh color while the aqua dries to a nice white color. However both pioneer epoxy puttys are very sticky to handle. I even knead the epoxy aqua in particular under a faucet of running water.

Thus, I experimented this time with the Selley's high grade epoxy putty. The Selley's worked like a charm, it is not as sticky as the Pioneer Aqua variant and dries smoother than both the Pioneer wood and aqua variants.

Now, here is the catch... it is double the prize of the Pioneer variants. The Selley's retails here for 200 Php unlike the Pioneer variants which are retailed as 100 Php, you could also buy a smaller tube of Pioneer epoxy putty for 60 Php. Honestly I'd still go with the Selley's if you asked me.

The Selley's dries smoother and is easier to knead, Anyways here are of tips with pics of my progress with the Selley's epoxy putty...

TIP no.1

Always make sure that the putty has something to cling on, you do not want cured putty breaking / cracking off later.

You could glue pieces of rods on the surface and / OR you could drill 2 mm holes all over the surface of the plastic.

TIP no. 2

Knead, knead and knead it... roughly around 2 minutes of rigorous but fun kneading. You can see in the photos below that I was so eager to reshape the boob part of the MG Sazabi, thus the putty mixture was not kneaded properly.

However you can also see in the photos that the left side of the part has a smoother putty mixture, no green parts and it dried smoothly.

note: the part shown here has been left overnight ( 6 hours ) to cure and was sanded for 3 hours before getting the shape right and smooth.